


Wishes For Horses

by Rochelle_Templer



Series: Inktober For Writers 2017 [23]
Category: The Monkees, The Monkees (TV)
Genre: Fairy Tale Elements, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 10:12:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12529012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rochelle_Templer/pseuds/Rochelle_Templer
Summary: Peter finds an old lamp...and the chance of a lifetime....





	Wishes For Horses

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of my Inktober for Writers project. The prompt for this fic is "wishes".

Peter Tork was having a great day.

He’d woken up to a sunshine filled morning. His coffee had had just the perfect amount of cream, sugar and cinnamon in it. And Mike had even made omelets for breakfast, one of Peter’s favorite breakfast meals.

Later, he had left to grab a candy bar at the corner store about a block from the pad. Just when he thought his day couldn’t get any better, he ended up winning an envelope full of free tickets to various activities for being the store’s one-thousandth customer.

As he walked out of the store, Peter chewed on his chocolate bar and was flipping through the tickets. There were plenty in the envelope to share with the guys and some of the activities looked wonderful to Peter such as the tickets to the zoo, movie theater and museum. He was trying to decide which one to visit that day when something glittering caught the corner of his eye.

Peter gulped down the rest of the candy bar, shoved the packet of tickets into his pocket and scanned the ground near his feet. Near the corner of the alley next to him, there was an old oil lamp lying on the ground. He picked it up and inspected it. It had what looked like a ring of gems around the lid, but they and the metal of the lamp were dusty and tarnished.

“Groovy,” Peter said as he examined it. “I bet Micky would like this. He always likes odd stuff.”

As he turned it around in his hands, his fingers brushed across a spot that was sticky with grape jelly. Knowing how much Mike hated it when something dirty was brought back to the pad, Peter yanked out a handkerchief from his pocket and started to rub the lamp in an attempt to make it look presentable.

A few seconds later, a thin trail of purple smoke drifted from the spout of the lamp. There was a loud “bang”, and Peter almost dropped the lamp in surprise. However, he managed to hold onto it even as the smoke cleared and a short, dapper man in a pin stripe suit and a bowler hat appeared, floating on a cloud of the purple smoke.

“I am the genie of the lamp,” the man said. His accent was British, although it sounded haughtier to Peter than Davy’s did.

“Hey, that’s great,” Peter beamed at him. “A real genie. That’s outtasite. But…aren’t you supposed to be wearing a turban and stuff? Like in the fairy tales?”

“An inaccurate cliché,” the genie said with a wave of his hand. “Not all of us are Middle-Eastern. In fact, a century ago, I spent a number of years on the coast of France and met a fellow genie who had gotten his start there. Nice fellow, if a bit on the pedantic side….”

“Oh ok,” Peter said. “Sorry about that.”

“Not at all, dear boy, not at all,” the genie replied. “You know, I like you. You seem like a good sort so because I’m in a generous mood, I’ll grant you three wishes.”

“Three? I thought that was what every genie offered,” Peter said.

“Another infernal inaccuracy,” the genie sighed. “Any genie worth his salt knows that you can’t go around handing out that many wishes all the time willy-nilly. Imagine the chaos that could create. Granted, I’m not so stingy that I only hand out one wish with all kinds of stipulations attached to it. Still, that doesn’t mean I’m a pushover for wishes. Consider yourself lucky.”

“Oh I do, I do,” Peter said, bobbing his head eagerly. “So um, can I use one of my wishes now?”

“Certainly,” the genie said. “But….” He held up an index finger. “There are some rules. No bringing people back from the dead or forcing people to fall in love with you. Both are messy no matter what. And no wishes for things that will affect the destiny of the world directly. So no wishing for ‘world peace’ or anything of that nature.”

“Aw, but that was going to be one of my wishes,” Peter said with a pout.

“Yes, I had a feeling it would be,” the genie nodded. “But I’m afraid you humans will need to sort such things out yourselves. Oh and don’t even try the ‘wishing for more wishes’ trick. I’ve heard that one far more times that I would like. Three wishes is all you get. Not a single wish more.”

“Ok,” Peter nodded. “I know what I want to wish for first.”

“Yes?”

“I wish I knew what I should make my other wishes for.”

“What?!” the genie said, bemused. “You want to waste one of your wishes on that?”

“It’s not a waste,” Peter insisted. “If I don’t have any good ideas of what to wish for, how can I enjoy my wishes?”

The genie looked like he was about to say something, but instead paused and shook his head, chuckling. “I can’t exactly fault your logic. All right then, I’ll grant you your wish.”

The genie closed his eyes and then snapped his fingers. In that instant, ideas about what to wish for rushed into Peter’s brain. It only took him a minute of thought to figure out which ideas to go with.

“All right, I’m ready for my next wish,” Peter said with a grin.

“Fire away.”

“I wish…that our landlord, Babbit would win the lottery.”

“Hold on…you wish your landlord would win the lottery? Why not yourself or your family or one of your friends?”

“Well because if he wins the lottery, he won’t be so worried about money,” Peter said. “And then he wouldn’t be so grumpy all the time and maybe he’d just let us pay him when we can. Or maybe he’d just let us have the place. Because I don’t think he really wants it, he just doesn’t know what to do with it. Besides, he’s let us stay there so long, he should get something back.”

“All right,” the genie said. He snapped his fingers again. “It’s done. I do hope your plan will work out the way you say it will. Now, would you like to hold off on your last wish?”

“No, I know what I want,” Peter said. “I wish…that no matter what happens, me and my friends will find a way to stick together.”

“Peter, I’m not sure you understand,” the genie said. “I could make it so you and your friends are rich and famous. So you wouldn’t have to worry about money, getting another gig or run-ins with petty criminals.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about that,” Peter said. “I mean, if we stick together, it’ll work out in the end. I know it. So that’s my wish.”

The genie smiled and shook his head. It was a bit of a vague and questionable wish, but the sincerity Peter had shown made it impossible to want to quibble.

“All right,” the genie said. He closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment longer than he had on the previous two wishes before snapping his fingers. “It’s done. Whatever scrapes you and your friends get into, you will not abandon each other.”

“Thanks,” Peter said with a wide grin. “So, uh, what happens now? Do I give you to someone else or…?”

“Just find a nice spot to leave my lamp,” the genie said. “When the right person comes along, it’ll be found again. Godspeed to you, Peter Tork.”

The genie disappeared in a puff of smoke. Once he was gone, Peter hummed and took off for the beach, having decided that maybe the genie would enjoy being near the ocean for a while.


End file.
